Dominion
by sparky's lizzie
Summary: Though lovers be lost love shall not  my take on how the aftermath of The Telling should have gone, completely au


I have no claim over the characters or the situations of Alias, so don't sue me please

**Dominion**

Prologue

_Though lovers be lost love shall not_

While a torch is extinguished the flame continues to burn, burn with an intensity that encompasses everything. That makes the idea of moving on redundant and makes a mockery of every relationship that may attempt to follow. For you have been burned, touched by something so primal that it will hold you captive for eternity. And you are a willing participant in this you allow yourself to be incarcerated because then at least she's still with you, then at least the feel of her lips against yours, of her sighs and moans when she trembled beneath you are still tangible. This is your life, an imitation, verisimilitude at its cruellest because at least in your world she is with you, in your world she will never leave you. And though what you're doing cannot really be considered living you are happy to exist here within your fabrication because in the real world you died right along with her. In the real world when you released her ashes yours were released too, your essence spread on the water alongside hers. For it is futile to pretend that you can live without her, that you can live without your heart.

_Though they sink through the sea they shall rise again_

As long as you stay you both remain, bound by your love and what you were together. This has become your mantra since the day she left, at your weakest moments when you welcome death you hear her voice speaking those very words to you. Those are the times when you wish you could just forget, somehow exorcise her from your mind. But she remains in spite of your attempts and you are unsure whether it is you keeping her here or her refusing to abscond. So you stay alive for her, allow her a semi-vicarious existence all because you have never once been able to say no to her something even death seems unable to change. Gradually days become weeks and weeks merge effortlessly into months and you continue with life letting no one or nothing permeate the surface on which you glide. You have heard the whispers of co-workers that conspicuously grow quiet whenever you enter a room. They converse about your sanity and doubt your love because of the ease with which you have gotten over your supposed soul mate. You do not react however nor offer any explanation to their speculation, why should you defend yourselves to them, these people who saw your partner as nothing more than an asset to your government, these people who knew nothing of the vulnerable, amazing and intelligent woman that changed the axis of your world when she crashed into your life.

You could tell them that in the darkest hours of the night when her memory threatens to consume you and devour you whole you allow her entry. She revives you as she has always done, it is with her that you shall rise again and when she departs as inevitably as the morning comes you succumb back into your version of life. But you do not and you will not because if they have questioned your sanity previously, then they are most likely to believe you need to be committed for seeing your dead girlfriend. Soon enough a year has passed you realise as you catch a glimpse of a colleague's desk calendar out the corner of your eye. And after three hundred and sixty-five days reality hits, as you acknowledge that you have spent every one of those days without her but every night being haunted by her.

_Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks, but bears it out even to the edge of doom_

You read those words as a teenager and scoffed with misunderstanding, to you then love was temporary if it existed at all. It was with arrogance that you believed you would never fall prey to such sloppy sentimentally. Who would have guessed that twenty years later you would bear witness to the kind of love that was being described. But for you the edge of doom has come and gone you stood on the precipice alone and proclaimed your love even then for everyone to hear. But your love has altered it grows still with every nightly visitation from your ethereal spectre as you slip further under her spell. You can no longer distinguish between future, present and past she eclipses everything and becomes the entirety of your life. For you are sure that there was nothing before her and know nothing will come after her.

From living between the memory and the moment you immerse yourself in the memory unreachable to anyone bar her. Your friends the few you had are disappearing as are your family, your best friend holds out longer than most, convinced that he of all people can bring you back from where you currently reside. He even goes so far as to try and take you to a bar and get you talking to some women. It is after this debacle that he finally starts to distance himself, seeing how when he brought you home how you cowered in the corner of your bedroom shouting yourself hoarse for her. That was his breaking point. You nonchalantly accept that they have given up on you, feel that you are as unsavable as you are unreachable. It's true you are but you have never needed to be saved from her, from her love. They fail to see that without her you were drowning only with her are you more than half alive.

Another year has passed without your notice, this time there are no colleague's calendars to see; this time you are alerted to the passage of time by her father. He comes to visit for what reason you cannot ascertain until you look into his eyes and see your world reflected there. There is neither the calumny or accusation staring back at you that in all your previous encounters had burned into your mind. Instead you realise that her father, her stoic, unwavering champion has succumb to the memories as you have, he too has forsaken the real world for a place where his daughter is still flesh and blood, where she is more than a star on a wall or a name carved into non-descript marble as memorial. Your first reaction is strangely to laugh, previously you would have been reviled by the notion of having something in common with a man such as Jack Bristow. Now you feel it fitting that the two men who loved her most are unable to comprehend a life without her.

There is however something else to his expression that you had not expected; hope is there, an emotion that you have not experienced for two years and yet you can recollect what it felt like. Pure unbridled hope tells you that the child he fathered has returned to him as more than a concocted fantasy.

"She's alive Michael."

'Of course she is' you want to reply but don't irresolute of her father's reaction. You do not acknowledge either that she lives with you, that she's been living with you for the past two years. You question what expression is showing on your face as he shakes his head at your bewilderment and lack of reaction and plants both hands on your shoulders trying to infuse his meaning through touch. "I got a call, she's asking for you."

And like that the faux imitation world falls away from your eyes and your heart, the real world comes crashing down around you in a barrage of glorious chaos. In your previous forays into the real world over the past two years you found yourself paralysed and depersonalised unable to feel anything besides the gnawing cavity that had taken residence in your chest. For the first time in seven hundred and thirty days you feel your heart start to beat again, you feel life return to you and with it grief, joy, anticipation and fear and you acknowledge that finally you are living rather than just existing.

Before you know it you are in Jack's car nervously playing with your seatbelt as it dawns on you that you are on your way to her, to Sydney the source of two years of both agonising pain and paradoxical intense happiness. But he is driving too slowly in your opinion and he refuses to pay attention to the various signals you have been giving him since he pulled out of your complex. "She's not going anywhere Michael, we'll be there soon." If you had more presence of mind you may have questioned him about where you were going but location was not your priority, she was.

When you finally arrive you find yourself unable to enter the room that you have been directed to. You pause by the door silently praying that this isn't all some elaborate hoax because you had failed to cope with losing her once doing it again was not an option you entertained. An infectious giggle reaches your ears from inside the room and you know without doubt whom it belongs to. As you push open the door the giggling stops as she is instantly aware of your presence. Your first look at her takes your breath away and you realise that your memories of her are incorrect for you never remembered just how truly beautiful she is.

"Michael!"

"Sydney?"

_Though they sink through the sea they shall rise again_

TBC

The quotes in the chapter are taken from 'And Death Shall Have no Dominion' by Dylan Thomas and 'Sonnet 116' by William Shakespeare


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